The Nunes FISA Memo: Does Not Prove FBI Misconduct in Shape, Form, or Fashion

Four Pages of Misleading, Distorted, Incomplete Information 

(Working hard to disguised the truth)

Pop Quiz: Pick out Devin Nunes 

(In this GOP mob)

Declassified Nunes FISA Memo (RED highlights the major blatant discrepancies and gross errors as well as major gaps and gaffs in the Nunes' memo).

Declassified by order of the President February 2, 2018.

Subject: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Abuses at the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Purpose: This memorandum provides Members an update on significant facts relating to the Committee's ongoing investigation into the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and their use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during the 2016 presidential election cycle. The findings, which are detailed below, (1) raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DOJ and FBI interactions with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and (2) represent a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses related to the FISA process.

Investigation Update: 

On October 21, 2016, DOJ and FBI sought and received a FISA probable cause order (not under Title VII) authorizing electronic surveillance on Carter Page from the FISC. Page is a U.S. citizen who served as a volunteer advisor to the Trump presidential campaign. 

IAW FISA, the application had to be first certified by the FBI Director or Dep Director. It then required the approval of the AG, Dep AG, or the Senate-confirmed Assist AG for the National Security Division.

The complicated history of Carter Page - where to start?

Trump touted Page early in his campaign as one of his foreign policy advisers at a time when critics were questioning his policy credentials. But Page been at the center of the Russia probe since well before Mueller arrived on the scene, including for a controversial July 2016 trip he made to Moscow with then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s permission -- on the condition he not be an official representative of the Trump campaign. 

In September 2016, Page even wrote then-FBI Director James Comey asking for him to put a “prompt end” to any inquiry looking at his ties to Russia.

The FBI and DOJ obtained one initial FISA warrant targeting Carter Page and three FISA renewals from the FISC. As required by statute (50 U.S.C. §1805(d) (1)), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days and each renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. 

Then-Director James Comey signed three FISA applications in question on behalf of the FBI, and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe signed one. Then-Dep AG Sally Yates, then-Acting DAG Dana Boente, and Dep AG Rod Rosenstein each signed one or more FISA applications on behalf of DOJ.

The GOP's Russia boogeymen:

Republicans made a point here of lumping together in one paragraph pretty much all the DOJ leaders who have had central roles in different parts of the Russia probe. 

There’s Yates, the former acting attorney general who warned White House counsel Don McGahn in Jan. 2017 about Michael Flynn’s susceptibility to Russian blackmail; Comey, the former FBI director whose firing launched the whole special counsel probe in the first place; McCabe, who just stepped down as the No. 2 at the FBI; and Rosenstein, who as the deputy attorney general is overseeing the Mueller probe following Attorney General Jeff Session’s recusal.

Due to the sensitive nature of foreign intelligence activity, FISA submissions (including renewals) before the FISC are classified. As such, the public's confidence in the integrity of the FISA process depends on the court's ability to hold the government to the highest standard — particularly as it relates to surveillance of American citizens.

However, the FISC rigor in protecting the rights of Americans, which is reinforced by 90-day renewals of surveillance orders, is necessarily dependent on the government's production to the court of all material and relevant facts. This should include information potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application that is known by the government.

In the case of Carter Page, the government had at least four independent opportunities before the FISC to accurately provide an accounting of the relevant facts. However, our findings indicate that, as described below, material and relevant information was omitted.

1. The “Steele Dossier” compiled by Christopher Steele on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign formed an essential part of the Carter Page FISA application. 

Steele was a longtime FBI source who was paid over $160,000 by the DNC and Clinton campaign, via the law firm Perkins Coie and research firm Fusion GPS, to obtain derogatory information on Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

Republicans paid Fusion GPS first:

Republicans originally funded the research firm that created the controversial Steele dossier before the Democrats did. That’s overlooked here, but the conservative online news site Washington Free Beacon last fall acknowledged to congressional investigators that it had funded Fusion GPS’s work during the Republican primaries when Republicans were desperate to knock Donald Trump out of the presidential campaign.

a. Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele's efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

b. The initial FISA application notes Steele was working for a named U.S. person, but does not name Fusion GPS and principal Glenn Simpson, who was paid by a U.S. law firm (Perkins Coie) representing the DNC (even though it was known by DOJ at the time that political actors were involved with the Steele dossier). The application does not mention Steele was ultimately working on behalf of — and paid by — the DNC and Clinton campaign, or that the FBI had separately authorized payment to Steele for the same information.

2. The Carter Page FISA application also cited extensively a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, which focuses on Page's July 2016 trip to Moscow. 

This article does not corroborate the Steele dossier because it is derived from information leaked by Steele himself to Yahoo News. The Page FISA incorrectly assesses that Steele did not directly provide information to Yahoo News. Steele has admitted in British court filings that he met with Yahoo News — and several other outlets — in September 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS. Perkins Coie was aware of Steele's initial media contacts and even hosted a meeting in Washington D.C. in 2016 with Steele and Fusion GPS where the matter was discussed.

The scandal reporter who's everywhere: 

Journalist Michael Isikoff has been in the middle of presidential controversies before. He was poised to break the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky story, but was famously scooped by the upstart Drudge Report in 1998 after Newsweek held his article. 

While CNN gets credit for reporting in August 2016 that the FBI and DOJ were looking at ties between Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and corruption in Ukraine, it was Isikoff’s story a month later that was among the first pieces to highlight more of the questionable ties between Trump world — including Carter Page— and Russia.

a. Steele was suspended and then terminated as an FBI source for what the FBI defines as the most serious of violations —  an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn. Steele should have been terminated for his previous undisclosed contacts with Yahoo and other outlets in September—before the Page application was submitted to the FISC in October — but Steele improperly concealed from and lied to the FBI about those contacts.

b. Steele's numerous encounters with the media violated the cardinal rule of source handling — maintaining confidentiality — and demonstrated that Steele had become a less than reliable source for the FBI.

3. Before and after Steele was terminated as a source, he maintained contact with DOJ via then-Associate Dep AG Bruce Ohr, a senior DOJ official who worked closely with Dep AG Yates and later with Rosenstein. Shortly after the election, the FBI began interviewing Ohr, documenting his communications with Steele. For example, in September 2016: 

Steele admitted to Ohr his feelings against then-candidate Trump when Steele said he ...was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president. 

This clear evidence of Steele's bias was recorded by Ohr at the time and subsequently in official FBI files — but not reflected in any of the Page FISA applications.

The curious role of Bruce Ohr:

Republicans have expressed deep suspicion about Bruce Ohr, a senior Justice Department official who oversees an organized crime task force. The memo reflects those concerns by noting that he worked closely with Obama appointee Sally Yates and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and that Ohr’s wife worked for Fusion GPS, the firm that commissioned the Steele dossier. 

But the fact that Ohr reported Steele’s comments — that he was intent on preventing Trump from becoming president — to the FBI undercuts the notion that Ohr was a raging partisan.

a. During this same time period, Ohr's wife was employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump. Ohr later provided the FBI with all of his wife's opposition research, paid for by the DNC and Clinton campaign via Fusion GPS. The Ohrs' relationship with Steele and Fusion GPS was inexplicably concealed from the FISC.

4. According to the head of the FBI's counterintelligence division, Assistant Director Bill Priestap, corroboration of the Steele dossier was in its "infancy" at the time of the initial Page FISA application. After Steele was terminated, a source validation report conducted by an independent unit within FBI assessed Steele's reporting as only minimally corroborated. Yet, in early January 2017, Director Comey briefed President-elect Trump on a summary of the Steele dossier, even though it was according to his June 2017 testimony — “salacious and unverified.” While the FISA application relied on Steele's past record of credible reporting on other unrelated matters, it ignored or concealed his anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations. 

Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.

Did McCabe admit the dossier drove the Page surveillance?

A key dispute in the fight over the dossier has been the question of how large a role it played in obtaining the warrants to surveil Carter Page. One surprise in the memo is that Republicans claim former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe told the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI wouldn’t have sought to put Page under surveillance without the information from Steele and his dossier. 

McCabe’s statement is notable because the FBI’s defenders have argued in recent days that there was no way the dossier could have provided the bulk of the FBI’s rationale for seeking the warrants.

5. The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation of conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. 

The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. 

Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel’s Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also reflect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an “insurance” policy against President Trump’s election.

Info on Papadopoulos, not the dossier, launched FBI's Trump-Russia probe:

The memo confirms reports that the FBI formally opened their investigation into Russian efforts to compromise the Trump campaign back in July 2016 based on suspicions about Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. 

So, while the dossier may have played a critical role in putting Page under surveillance in October, the document — containing some salacious claims about Trump — was not the driving force behind the FBI’s scrutiny of the Trump team. The timing suggests Papadopoulos came under scrutiny because of a reported episode in London in May 2016 where he told an Australian diplomat that Russia was offering the campaign “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. 

About a year after opening the investigation, the FBI arrested Papadopoulos on charges he lied to them. He pleaded guilty in that case last October and is cooperating with prosecutors.

My last point after reading this analysis: GOP rightwing mission is to tear down the institution of government and the news organizations that report so that neither can or will be believed or trusted. 

Also related story here from Business Insider.

Who would love to see all that go down: Putin naturally. 

Many GOPers (e.g., Ryan) say “the public is clamoring for the memo’s release to see the truth” – well, yes, but slow down a bit – if the GOP is putting out what they know to be false, misleading, and untrue information in the Nunes Memo then whose trust are they seeking? Seems to be: “Fake News” and Alex Jones conspiracy types. 

That must never be our national standard never above the law in any case – never…!!!

Thanks for stopping and stay tuned for sure.